The ORIGINAL gathering place for a merry band of Three Percenters. (As denounced by Bill Clinton on CNN!)

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

"Правда." Pity the Poor Pravda Press -- Nobody Believes Them Anymore.

"What do you think about what happened last week, Comrade?"

"I don't know. I haven't read my Pravda this morning."

-- Popular joke of the Soviet Union.

Comrade Lenin read Pravda.

The Great Leader Stalin read Pravda.

Worker Comrades Distributed Pravda.

Even Peasant Comrades Read Pravda.

But NOBODYbelieved Pravda.

Pravda (Russian: Правда, "Truth") was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991. The Pravda newspaper was started in 1912 in St. Petersburg. It was converted from a weekly Zvezda. It did not arrive in Moscow until 1918. During the Cold War, Pravda was well known in the West for its pronouncements as the official voice of Soviet Communism. (Similarly Izvestia was the official voice of the Soviet government.) As the names of the main Communist newspaper and the main Soviet newspaper, Pravda and Izvestia, meant "the truth" and "the news" respectively, a popular Russian saying was "v Pravde net izvestiy, v Izvestiyakh net pravdy" (In the Truth there is no news, and in the News there is no truth). -- Wikipedia.

I thought about Pravda when I read this at Politico.com today. It reminded me of another joke from the Stalin era:

Every morning a man would come up to the newspaper stand, and buy a copy of Pravda, look at the front page and then toss it angrily into the near-by bin. The newspaper-seller was intrigued. 'Excuse me,' he said to the man, 'Every morning you buy a copy of Pravda from me and chuck it in the bin without even opening it. What do you buy it for?' 'I'm only interested in the front page,' replied the man. 'I'm looking out for a death notice.' 'But you don't get death notices on the front page,' said the newspaper-seller, taken aback. 'I assure you, the death notice I'm looking for will be on the front page.'

The death notice I'm looking for is that of the state-run media. Go to the Politico link and read the story, I'm not going to waste the time reprinting it here. The editors of the New York Times and the networks are as sensitive to serving Comrade Barack's every propaganda need as their Pravda intellectual brothers of the past were about Stalin.

But the people are not fooled.

The state-run media is mystified why their sales and ratings are tanking.

They shouldn't be.

Another joke from the late Soviet period, during "the confusing time when the western newspapers were claiming thousands of Chernobyl casualties while the Russians were insisting there had only been two deaths, the East Europeans were no more convinced by Pravda than were the people of the west:"

The day after the Chernobyl accident a great crowd suddenly appeared asking Saint Peter for admission to heaven. "Where did you all come from?" he asked. "From Chernobyl," they answered. Saint Peter pulled out his copy of Pravda and said, "I'm sorry, I see I am only authorized to admit two of you."

FOX ratings are soaring, the listenership of talk radio is spiking and the Internet is humming precisely because our side doesn't believe the state-run media anymore. This will continue, and their sales and ratings will continue to plummet, until the collectivists get the nerve to directly attack these avenues of access to the truth.

When that happens, they will only infuriate us more and the proto-tyrants will risk an armed people's wrath.

I can't wait to see them try.

Until then they will continue to get our derision, disrespect and disbelief.

Did I tell you the one about the New York Times, Walter Duranty and Stalin's moustache?

More and more people are going off the grid even where I live, not to mention ignoring Statemedia garbage.

At my nearest sporting goods retailer, Bernzomatic "Fat Boy" 1-lb portable propane cans, kerosene, and camp lanterns are flying off the shelves faster than guns and ammo. More people are ditching Con Edison and National Grid and are using their own power. The survivalist forums are buzzing with newcomers filled with questions about living off the grid and using your own energy.

"FOX ratings are soaring, the listenership of talk radio is spiking and the Internet is humming precisely because our side doesn't believe the state-run media anymore."

For the most part I think you're right - and do get your point. BUT - do you really believe that FOX isn't apart of the "state-run media". I would say controlled opposition would be more of an accurate description.

If you were right about FOX, they wouldn't leave Judge Andrew Napolitano in the basement while Glenn Beck, the self professed Libertarian, gets to lead the conservatives like the Pied Piper led his rats. - Keeping us healthily in the Left-Right paradigm. Leading us right where they want us.

My Blog List

Advice on child rearing from my son.

Everyone should grow up with simulated equipment from a heavy weapons platoon. It gives you a more well rounded education and an appreciation for the finer things in life. -- Sergeant Matthew Vanderboegh, United States Army.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.